Does race exist?

[OVERWATCH]

The ability to interbreed and produce fertile offspring is a defining characteristic of species, not subspecies, which is another term for race. No scientific supporting evidence to boot, this is nonsense.

Yes, I understand, due to a couple of exceptions to the rule, "biologically speaking, there is no such thing as species."- that shall be our new platitude.

But wait, species classification doesn't hold value for social engineering yet, therefore that should hold the eliminativists at bay!

:rolleyes:

[Tyrone_Hartlan]

That is a nonsensical platitude, a race whether socially or biologically defined needs another out-group to contrast itself with.

Anyhow, you have already referred to Jews as a race in another post, so you've contradicted yourself already.:rolleyes: I used the word "race" for purposes of communication. Genetically speaking, "race" does not exist. We are all the same. But if my use of the word "race" causes you problems, replace it with the concept of general groupings of population based upon gross phenotype differences. (If you wish to give me multiple new terms, to cover subtleties, that's fine too...but my point is that even if I redefine "fat," I still can't step out onto a rickety bridge and expect it not to fall because I'm "not fat"...)

:rolleyes:

[OVERWATCH]

Genetically speaking, "race" does not exist. We are all the same.

False. Humankind has genetically been shown to cluster into five(5) continental groups, which roughly correlate with the concept of race by phenotype.

http://img184.exs.cx/img184/8978/021223sciracech1yo.jpg (http://www.imageshack.us)


Author: NICHOLAS WADE
Filed: 12/26/2002, 10:44:40 AM
Source: The New York Times
December 24, 2002
Humankind falls into five continental groups — broadly equivalent to the common conception of races — when a computer is asked to sort DNA data from people from around the world into clusters.
The major groups are African (orange), Europeans and Middle Easterners (blue), East Asians (pink), Melanesians (green) and American Indians (purple). Genomes of people from Central Asia, such as the Hazara of Afghanistan and the Uygurs of western China, are a blend of European and East Asian, as might be expected for people living at a historical crossroads. Some Middle Easterners, like the Bedouin and the Mozabites of Algeria, carry an admixture of African genes.
The chart, generated by Dr. Marcus Feldman of Stanford and colleagues and published in the current Science, was made by sampling the DNA of 1,056 people from 52 of the many populations around the world. Each person’s genome was sampled at 377 sites where the DNA breaks into a stutter of repeated short sequences. These repeats, though apparently without function, are useful in tracking human variation, and are also the elements used in DNA forensic tests of identity.
In the chart, each individual’s genome is represented by a single line, colored according to its ancestry from each continental group. Black lines separate individuals from different populations.
The 52 populations were collected as part of the Human Genome Diversity Project. Major omissions include Australian aborigines and Indians. Both groups are in general unwilling to give their blood for genetic analysis.
Populations worldwide share most of their genetic variability in common. But since they dispersed from the ancestral human population, each has accumulated its own pattern of genetic differences through random change and natural selection. The chart is based on these genetic differences, not on the very much larger shared inheritance.

[Tyrone_Hartlan]

False. Humankind has genetically been shown to cluster into five(5) continental groups, which roughly correlate with the concept of race by phenotype.Your "evidence", if it can be called that, is merely an example of "race" as a socioculturally irrelevant bioclimatic adaptation. I.e., not something that would be politically relevant from any position of science. Also, it is a scientific fact that all of these bioclimatic variables (whose existence ain't under dispute) constitute a minute level of variation that makes it impossible to make "racial" separations. This observation is also strengthened by the maternally transmitted anthropological chromosome record, which shows that every living human is descended from the same one to ten thousand individuals who lived no more than eighty thousand years ago.

The reason, in case you weren't aware, that scientists are forced to look at minute subtleties such as repetitive microsatellites (which is the object of study in your linked article) is only because the global expression of human DNA is almost identical due to the exceptionally small size of the above mentioned original pool. So much so that one single familial group of chimps has more genetic diversity between them than all of the billions of humans that are alive today do.

As such, the above lends no strength to the pseudo-scientific idea of "race" as a cohesive compartmentalization that logically carries intrinsic social or political significance - but only to the concept of "race" as the superficially observable, wholly impermanent bioclimatic adaptations of a single organism or "species".

[OVERWATCH]

Your "evidence", if it can be called that, is merely an example of "race" as a socioculturally irrelevant bioclimatic adaptation.

Too simplistic; you fail to mention that is an example of biological isolation due to geographic barriers, which gives rise to shared traits. It is also a bioclimatic adaptation as well.

I.e., not something that would be politically relevant from any position of science.

The biological taxa of race is politically relevant, because immigrants who belong to the same major race as the host country would have a better chance to assimilate by virtue of their similar phenotype, as opposed to those of radically different type.

Also, it is a scientific fact that all of these bioclimatic variables (whose existence ain't under dispute) constitute a minute level of variation that makes it impossible to make "racial" separations.

False, taxonomy supports the use of fuzzy clusters. The determination of what constitutes 'minute' is arbitrary. All that needs to be shown in support of the idea of race is a biological seperation which results in a corresponding clustering of shared traits.

This observation is also strengthened by the maternally transmitted anthropological chromosome record, which shows that every living human is descended from the same one to ten thousand individuals who lived no more than eighty thousand years ago.

Evidence? Proof?

The reason, in case you weren't aware, that scientists are forced to look at minute subtleties such as repetitive microsatellites (which is the object of study in your linked article) is only because the global expression of human DNA is almost identical due to the exceptionally small size of the above mentioned original pool.

Read the article again. Why are you copy/pasting from politicsforum.org? (http://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32006&sid=71ae1014e77a86b171729bc604c18834)

So much so that one single familial group of chimps has more genetic diversity between them than all of the billions of humans that are alive today do.

Evidence? Proof?

As such, the above lends no strength to the pseudo-scientific idea of "race" as a cohesive compartmentalization that logically carries intrinsic social or political significance - but only to the concept of "race" as the superficially observable, wholly impermanent bioclimatic adaptations of a single organism or "species".

Nonsense. "Bioclimatic adaptations of a single organism"?

[Only] "superficially observable"? Again, nonsense. Not only can a person's race be reliably determined through skeletal remains, but also through genetic analysis, which is of great social value because of it's application for law enforcement.

[Tyrone_Hartlan]

I was copying and pasting from my blog. If you don't want to see the evidence, what can I do? Here is irrefutable proof of the claim you are questioning:

Genetically Speaking, Race Doesn't Exist In Humans

Race doesn't matter. In fact, it doesn't even exist in humans. While that may sound like the idealistic decree of a minister or rabbi, it's actually the conclusion of an evolutionary and population biologist at Washington University in St. Louis.

Alan R. Templeton, Ph.D., professor of biology in Arts and Sciences at Washington University, has analyzed DNA from global human populations that reveal the patterns of human evolution over the past one million years. He shows that while there is plenty of genetic variation in humans, most of the variation is individual variation. While between-population variation exists, it is either too small, which is a quantitative variation, or it is not the right qualitative type of variation -- it does not mark historical sublineages of humanity.

Using the latest molecular biology techniques, Templeton has analyzed millions of genetic sequences found in three distinct types of human DNA and concludes that, in the scientific sense, the world is colorblind. That is, it should be.

"Race is a real cultural, political and economic concept in society, but it is not a biological concept, and that unfortunately is what many people wrongfully consider to be the essence of race in humans -- genetic differences," says Templeton. "Evolutionary history is the key to understanding race, and new molecular biology techniques offer so much on recent evolutionary history. I wanted to bring some objectivity to the topic. This very objective analysis shows the outcome is not even a close call: There's nothing even like a really distinct subdivision of humanity."

Templeton used the same strategy to try to identify race in human populations that evolutionary and population biologists use for non-human species, from salamanders to chimpanzees. He treated human populations as if they were non-human populations.

"I'm not saying these results don't recognize genetic differences among human populations," he cautions. "There are differences, but they don't define historical lineages that have persisted for a long time. The point is, for race to have any scientific validity and integrity it has to have generality beyond any one species. If it doesn't, the concept is meaningless."

Templeton's paper, "Human Races: A Genetic and Evolutionary Perspective," is published in the fall 1998 issue of American Anthropologist, an issue almost exclusively devoted to race. The new editor-in-chief of American Anthropologist is Robert W. Sussman, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Sussman and his guest editor for this issue, Faye Harrison, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at the University of South Carolina, have enlisted the talents and expertise of anthropologists across the discipline's four subdivisions -- biological, socio-cultural, linguistics and archeological anthropology -- plus Templeton and literary essayist Gerald L. Early, Ph.D., Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, to provide a renewed perspective on race, a topic that historically is linked closely to anthropology.

"The folk concept of race in America is so ingrained as being biologically based and scientific that it is difficult to make people see otherwise," says Sussman, a biological anthropologist. "We live on the one-drop racial division -- if you have one drop of black or Native American blood, you are considered black or Native American, but that doesn't cover one's physical characteristics. Templeton's paper shows that if we were forced to divide people into groups using biological traits, we'd be in real trouble. Simple divisions are next to impossible to make scientifically, yet we have developed simplistic ways of dividing people socially."

Single Evolutionary Lineage

Templeton analyzed genetic data from mitochondrial DNA, a form inherited only from the maternal side; Y chromosome DNA, paternally inherited DNA; and nuclear DNA, inherited from both sexes. His results showed that 85 percent of genetic variation in the human DNA was due to individual variation. A mere 15 percent could be traced to what could be interpreted as "racial" differences.

"The 15 percent is well below the threshold that is used to recognize race in other species," Templeton says. "In many other large mammalian species, we see rates of differentiation two or three times that of humans before the lineages are even recognized as races. Humans are one of the most genetically homogenous species we know of. There's lots of genetic variation in humanity, but it's basically at the individual level. The between-population variation is very, very minor."

Among Templeton's conclusions: there is more genetic similarity between Europeans and sub-Saharan Africans and between Europeans and Melanesians, inhabitants of islands northeast of Australia, than there is between Africans and Melanesians. Yet, sub-Saharan Africans and Melanesians share dark skin, hair texture and cranial-facial features, traits commonly used to classify people into races. According to Templeton, this example shows that "racial traits" are grossly incompatible with overall genetic differences between human populations.

"The pattern of overall genetic differences instead tells us that genetic lineages rapidly spread out to all of humanity, indicating that human populations have always had a degree of genetic contact with one another, and thus historically don't show any distinct evolutionary lineages within humanity," Templeton says. "Rather, all of humanity is a single long-term evolutionary lineage."

Templeton's analysis gives impetus to the trellis model of evolutionary lineages, as opposed to the candelabra model, still popular among many anthropologists. The candelabra model generally holds that humanity first evolved in Africa and then spread out of Africa into different populations in Europe and Asia. Picture a candelabra, then imagine three distinct populations emerging from a single stem, each of them separate genetic entities that have not mixed genes, and thus are distinct, biological races.

The trellis model pictures humanity as a latticework, each part having a connection with all other parts. It recognizes that modern humans started in Africa about 100 million years ago, but as humans spread, they also could, and did, come back into Africa, and genes were interchanged globally, not so much by individual Don Juans as through interchanges by adjacent populations.

"If you look down at any one part of a trellis, you see that all parts are interconnected," Templeton explains. "Similarly, with modern molecular evolutionary techniques, we can find over time genes in any one local area of humanity that are shared by all of humanity throughout time. There are no distinct branches, no distinct lineages. By this modern definition for race, there are no races in humanity."

Out of Africa

The candelabra model often is used to justify the "out of Africa" replacement theory, whereby modern humans descended from a single African population, expanding out of Africa and replacing the less advanced Old World humans in Europe, Asia and Africa.

Templeton's analysis suggests a less hostile scenario. "Traits can spread out of Africa to all of humanity because all of humanity is genetically interconnected," he says. "Spreading traits doesn't require spreading out and killing off all the earlier people. They're spread by reproducing with people -- it's make love, not war."

Sussman says one of his motivations in devoting his first issue of American Anthropologist to race was to show the relevance of anthropology both in the academic world and in our everyday lives.

"Historically, race has been a key issue in anthropology," says Sussman. "Since about 1910, anthropologists have been fighting this lack of understanding of what people are really like, how people have migrated and mixed together.

Anthropologists such as Franz Boas, W.E.B. Dubois, Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict and Ashley Montagu were in the forefront of warning people about the dangers of Nazism during the '30s and '40s, yet the anthropologists' profile on key issues in America has been so low recently that when President Clinton appointed a committee on race in 1997, there wasn't a single anthropologist on it.

"Anthropology, in some ways, has become too esoteric. One of my goals with the journal is to show what anthropologists are doing and how they relate to how we think and how we live."

[OVERWATCH]

I was copying and pasting from my blog. If you don't want to see the evidence, what can I do? Here is irrefutable proof of the claim you are questioning:

Irrefutable proof? Hardly-I am familiar with this outdated peice of sophistry from the late 90ies. I shall dissect it's shortcomings henceforth, devoid of any copy/pasting:

Alan R. Templeton, Ph.D., professor of biology in Arts and Sciences at Washington University, has analyzed DNA from global human populations that reveal the patterns of human evolution over the past one million years. He shows that while there is plenty of genetic variation in humans, most of the variation is individual variation. While between-population variation exists, it is either too small, which is a quantitative variation,

Whether it is too small or not is arbitrary.

or it is not the right qualitative type of variation -- it does not mark historical sublineages of humanity.

This is why your peice of sophistry, this article, shows it's age, because it was written well before the other evidence which I previously posted.

I wanted to bring some objectivity to the topic. This very objective analysis shows the outcome is not even a close call: There's nothing even like a really distinct subdivision of humanity."

No there isn't, but as I pointed out before, taxonomy supports the use of fuzzy clusters. The idea that races must be distinguished by mutually exclusive traits is a strawman.


"I'm not saying these results don't recognize genetic differences among human populations," he cautions. "There are differences, but they don't define historical lineages that have persisted for a long time.


Again, using old data.


"The folk concept of race in America is so ingrained as being biologically based and scientific that it is difficult to make people see otherwise," says Sussman, a biological anthropologist. "We live on the one-drop racial division -- if you have one drop of black or Native American blood, you are considered black or Native American, but that doesn't cover one's physical characteristics.


The social concept of race is of little to no relevance compared to the biological concept of race. The 'one drop' rule is a biologically meaningless protocol.


Templeton analyzed genetic data from mitochondrial DNA, a form inherited only from the maternal side; Y chromosome DNA, paternally inherited DNA; and nuclear DNA, inherited from both sexes. His results showed that 85 percent of genetic variation in the human DNA was due to individual variation. A mere 15 percent could be traced to what could be interpreted as "racial" differences.

"The 15 percent is well below the threshold that is used to recognize race in other species," Templeton says. "In many other large mammalian species, we see rates of differentiation two or three times that of humans before the lineages are even recognized as races. Humans are one of the most genetically homogenous species we know of. There's lots of genetic variation in humanity, but it's basically at the individual level. The between-population variation is very, very minor."


No surprise here, this is because humans are by nature anthropocentric, and we investigate ourselves far more deeply and in greater detail than we do hundreds of thousands of other species. Given more time, we might investigate subtle but real racial differences in the myriad of other life forms; but we pay much more attention to our own species; and this is to be expected. Furthermore, what is considered "minor" is arbitrary; because a single allele, a miniscule part of the entire genome, can have profound effect in the real world.

Among Templeton's conclusions: there is more genetic similarity between Europeans and sub-Saharan Africans and between Europeans and Melanesians, inhabitants of islands northeast of Australia, than there is between Africans and Melanesians. Yet, sub-Saharan Africans and Melanesians share dark skin, hair texture and cranial-facial features, traits commonly used to classify people into races. According to Templeton, this example shows that "racial traits" are grossly incompatible with overall genetic differences between human populations.

Depending upon what method Templeton used to arrive at this conclusion, he could be right or wrong; take note of the chart generated by Marcus Feldman which I posted earlier which shows melanesians as a seperate genetic race; furthermore, many physical anthropologists have noted physical differences between melanesians and negroids.

Additionally, species classification can be done by a handful of methods; and like racial classification via genetic or physical types, there is significant overlap, but a minority which falls outside this overlap; yet I don't hear many sophists proclaiming that "biologically speaking, species doesn't exist", using that same argument which Templeton uses above.

"The pattern of overall genetic differences instead tells us that genetic lineages rapidly spread out to all of humanity, indicating that human populations have always had a degree of genetic contact with one another, and thus historically don't show any distinct evolutionary lineages within humanity," Templeton says. "Rather, all of humanity is a single long-term evolutionary lineage."

Yet, if all humans travelled and mixed at will, with no degree of isolation, phenotypes would be utterly random.For example, two fair-skinned scandanavians could give birth to a child which looks west african;and vise versa; but that is not how it is; human phenotypes do not occur randomly throughout the spectrum of humanity; the occur with predictability; because there is no "human race", but rather, "human races"

Templeton's analysis suggests a less hostile scenario. "Traits can spread out of Africa to all of humanity because all of humanity is genetically interconnected," he says. "Spreading traits doesn't require spreading out and killing off all the earlier people. They're spread by reproducing with people -- it's make love, not war."

And yet, one sees no negroid physical characteristics or genetic lineages in Europoids or East Asians.... In fact, negroid genetic lineages are lacking outside of all Africa(save for descendants of the slave trade), and negroid physical characteristics are lacking in most of the rest of the world.

[daisy]

88mmflak posted species classification doesn't hold value for social engineering yet.the eugenic centres know who they are working on they just don't want the public to know and if you asked them i'm sure they will come up with some good story to tell you.

[Sinclair]

Race "exists" regardless of whether it is a biological reality or a social construct or whatever.

I mean, social constructs still EXIST, right?

[Ixtab]

Tyrone, your arguments are nonsensical. Even if the human races are genetically 99.8 per cent identical, and even if "every living human is descended from the same one to ten thousand individuals who lived no more than eighty thousand years ago"--

(a)Dogs and wolves are 100 per cent genetically identical -- moreso than humans -- but they are still functionally distinct. Also, there are significant CNP differences between human racial groups--affecting the code for seventy genes--genes involved in brain development, regulation of eating, body weight, and so on.
(b)Dogs are descended from wolves from an equally limited number of individuals who lived no more than fourteen thousand years ago.

[Overberserker]

Modern Medicine has already answered this question in the affirmative.

Race-Based Medicine Arrives (www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/ 2005/05/racebased_medic.php)

Drug Approved for Heart Failure in Black Patients (http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2004/07/drug_approved_f.php)

Heart Pill For Blacks Nears FDA Approval (www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/ 2005/06/heart_pill_for.php)

[Charles_Rigaud]

Race is mostly socially and those links on medicines don't prove anything. There are groups of Europeans who are more prone to diseases that other Europeans don't get, shall we say they are two different races? Race is social and in the eyes of the beholder, it doesn't exist biologically.

[daisy]

shall we say there are two different european races? yes
i am not an expert yet i believe there are two seperate white races
white jews=gray hair with age and white albinos=white hair.
they have mixed some=silver hair with age.

[RikuDrak]

Race is mostly socially and those links on medicines don't prove anything. There are groups of Europeans who are more prone to diseases that other Europeans don't get, shall we say they are two different races? Race is social and in the eyes of the beholder, it doesn't exist biologically.

BS, tbvh. There aren't just one "European" race, there's many. Ranging from races of Nordic derivative, mostly in the Northern areas of Europe and in parts of Scandinavia, Alpine, etc. etc.

Race is not skin colour, and to deny an evolution of people is to deny nature and it's courses. Biologically it exists, people aren't just "variably different" for some unexplained reason. Races start from bone structure to biological behaviour, the type of behaviour that cannot be conditioned from society or other individuals. Basic behaviours of when the human feels threatened, thus the instinct to survive or cope vary based on race.

It's not just a social idea. It may be in the US, but that's because the US has no relevant ideas of what race is other than a stupid notion of skin colour (like the "white" race or "black" race)

[daisy]

It's not just a social idea. It may be in the US, but that's because the US has no relevant ideas of what race is other than a stupid notion of skin colour (like the "white" race or "black" race) true white, black, and indian race is about all we have been taught in u.s.
i can see with my own eyes that albino is a race too yet no one teaches that.

[daisy]

race means alot.
arab muslims killed the white farmers in south africa.
arab muslim's bodies have black pigmentations they got through breeding with north african blacks. now someone has miswrote history and blamed those killings on north african blacks. these arab muslims are not black at all. they might have north african black's pigmentations yet they are straight up arab muslims. the chinese came in to build new farms behind them after they killed all the farmers in south africa. the chinese might know they are not blacks they are arab muslims.
now the arab muslims are here in america disguised as north african blacks.
they seem to be here to kill some of us. who knows maybe china will come in behind them afterwards here in america too.
_
some of the south african white farmer murders appear to be drug-related
South African police say that Pakistanis have bought up several farms after the white owners were killed and began planting poppies of Central Asian origin
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27892
in Zimbabwe, the infinitely much smaller number of white farmer deaths has created uproar whereas the South African murders are not common knowledge; international media does not report them and Western politicians have turned their gaze elsewhere. Emphasis added.
some black nationalist might have killed a few farmers in zimbawe and now someone is just tie-ing the many arab muslim killings of south africa into the black nationalist killings.
http://dominionpaper.ca/weblog/2005/11/are_white_farmers_killed_by_black_nationalists_more_dead_than_those_killed_by_criminals_under_capitalism.html
_